Gustavo Gaviria (25 December 1946-15 June 1991) was the financial head of the Medellin Cartel and the cousin of Pablo Escobar. Gaviria was one of the first people to form a partnership with Escobar, joining his operation in the 1970s; he would become as rich as his cousin, but he did not flaunt his wealth, instead being low-key to avoid assassination. However, he was illegally tortured and killed by Search Bloc in 1991, weakening the cartel.
Biography[]
Gaviria with two Brazilian prostitutes
Gustavo Gaviria was born on 25 December 1946 in Pereira, Colombia, the cousin and right-hand man of Pablo Escobar. The two of them were close, and they collaborated on crimes since the 1970s, with Gaviria managing his cousin's financials. In 1979, he succeeded in smuggling five kilograms of cocaine from Peru into Colombia for his cousin and their new associate Mateo Moreno, and he would soon have a fortune as large as his cousin. However, he kept himself out of sight from the government and any other parties that would want to assassinate him, and he became one of the most powerful and elusive Medellin Cartel members. Gaviria was opposed to Escobar's political aspirations during the 1980s, saying that he could never become a politician, and he was even more angry when Escobar sanctioned the assassinations of politicians such as Rodrigo Lara and Luis Carlos Galan in 1984 and 1989, respectively. Gustavo saw these actions as immature reactions to Escobar being forced to resign from the Chamber of Representatives by Lara, an incorruptible politician who saw through Escobar's facade of being a paisa Robin Hood. Gaviria, however, would remain his cousin's most trusted advisor, even while Gaviria lied about having a sexual relationship with Marina Ochoa, the sister of the powerful Ochoa Brothers. Eventually, the Ochoa Brothers, working with Helmer Herrera of the Cali Cartel, decided to rat Gaviria out to General Augusto Jaramillo of Search Bloc to stop his relationship with their sister as well as to weaken Escobar.
Death[]
Gaviria after being shot
On 15 June 1991, the Search Bloc followed him as he headed to the Motel Leonera in Medellin for a tryst with Marina. Gaviria was surrounded by policemen and forced into one of their trucks, and he was driven to a parking garage, where he was tied to a chair. He refused to tell Colonel Horacio Carrillo the location of his cousin, so Carrillo introduced him to several relatives of the victims of his cousin's terrorism. He met the brother of a 17-year-old girl who died in a Bogota bookstore bombing that Gaviria coordinated and a man who was the son and brother of policemen that Escobar killed. The two of them beat him severely, but he refused to snitch on his cousin, telling them that they, their families, and their wives were going to die, and he maniacally laughed and shouted before he was shot several times.
Carrillo had Gaviria's death reported as a shootout with police to avoid being arrested for an extrajudicial killing. His body was dumped in the Sabaneta neighborhood, and the police claimed that he had fired first before he was "gunned down". Gaviria was buried in the hills of Medellin, where he had played with Escobar when they were ten years old. Escobar was unable to attend the funeral due to security reasons, so he had La Quica hold a radio next to the Catholic priest as he delivered the funeral sermon, with Escobar listening to the sermon from a radio.